Inspection-based, Automatic Support for Obtaining Usable Web Sites for Vision Impaired Users

The aim of this work is to provide designers and developers of Web applications with support to obtain systems that are usable for vision-impaired users. To this end, we have defined a number of design criteria to improve Web site navigation through screen readers or other similar devices. A navigation test by blind and vision-impaired subjects showed that our criteria improved Web site usability both qualitatively and quantitatively. An inspection-based tool has been developed to ease application of such criteria. Its main features are presented along with a discussion of some application results.